The Punishment of Virtue (38 page)

We had just gotten him laid out on the ground when Colonel Campbell arrived, for once absolutely ignored upon his appearance in a room. He quickly sized up the situation and brought order to the frightened pandemonium, commanding the two soldiers who had arrived with a stretcher to stop gawking and get a move on, and reassuring the elders that he had some “pretty good docs here” who would get their friend “back in shape.”

Then he took over the meeting, running it with dignity, patience, and natural grace. “What you're telling me,” he said after carefully hearing the elders out, “is that because the U.S. troops are working so closely with one tribe, the rest of the Afghans are losing faith in them. Is that it?” He said he wished he had held this meeting earlier.

It proved to be the first of several that Colonel Campbell would convene with Kandahar-area elders.

The episode helped me reach another realization about the role of the U.S. military in places like Afghanistan. Two issues regarding the U.S. military presence are being confounded in the minds of many Westerners, I suddenly perceived, and they need to be disentangled. One is a theoretical question, a subject that requires serious deliberation and debate inside the United States. That question is, do we, as American citizens, wish to have the bulk of our foreign policy conducted by the Department of Defense? It is a crucial question for us as a nation, and it ought to be explicitly addressed and pronounced upon in the United States.
²

But how to interact with U.S. troops in theater was, at least for me as an American, a separate issue. For on the ground in Afghanistan, the Department of Defense
was
conducting the bulk of our foreign policy. Concretely, the sheer numbers made this truth incontrovertible. Upward of 5,000 U.S. soldiers were stationed in Kandahar. And one State Department representative. Even the newly constituted U.S. embassy, graced by the likes of Bill Taylor, could hardly make an impression next to the massive footprint of the U.S. military. For all intents and purposes, U.S. foreign policy was in the army's hands. And no amount of hostility directed by civilians at soldiers on the ground was going to change that.

There was just one problem. Whoever it was in Washington who had decided upon this state of affairs or allowed it to evolve, had neglected to inform the U.S. Army. Men like Colonel Campbell were trained in the skills of enemy engagement, battlefield tactics, military planning—not in politics and diplomacy. And they were being expected to do a job that had not even been properly defined for them. This was why so many of their decisions, like the empowerment of men like Gul Agha Shirzai, were ill adapted to the peacetime nation-building dimension of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.

Arguably, a Colonel Campbell should have caught on a little more quickly, but now that he had, now that he was grasping the true dimensions and potential import of his mission, he was struggling to catch up.

When, about six months later, in December 2003, I found myself sitting opposite another colonel, Richard Pedersen, in his office at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, I made this point explicitly. “I'm not sure this is what you signed up for, Colonel, but you're the one who's going to be running U.S. foreign policy out there. And you had better prepare yourself for it.”

“I don't like it,” he answered, “but I think you're right.”

Pedersen's unit, Bronco Brigade, Twenty-fifth Light Infantry Division, was on its way to Kandahar, and I had been flown out to brief its officers. I was at Schofield Barracks for three days, and could not have asked for a more attentive reception. I must have spent fully eight hours closeted with the colonel, who liked to learn orally, interacting with someone. His penetrating, rapid-fire questions led us all over the map that we had dug up and spread out on his desk. He introduced my talks to two successive groups of officers, seated at dozens of round tables after lunch at the base club, throwing a mantle of benediction over me with his generous words. I was a soldier too, he told his troops, working out there in Kandahar “without benefit of five thousand of her closest friends for protection.” I spent a lot of time with the division Civil Affairs team. And I drew up a longer and more complete version of the chart of the local tribes I had drafted for Colonel Campbell back in Kandahar.

The only thing that bothered me about this whole experience was that it had come about entirely by accident. A friend from my days in the Balkans was enrolled at the School for Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and had suggested me as a guest speaker. I was suddenly battling my worst stage fright since that original talk at First Parish Church in Concord, standing in front of a roomful of men in uniform. Concord citizens were my people, but I had no idea how what I had to say would go over with army majors.

Past a cold, slightly halting start, the talk went great. It appeared that previous guest speakers, general officers as a rule, had rarely given it to them so straight.

One member of the audience was from the Twenty-fifth Infantry Division, and made the contact with battalion HQ out in Hawaii—ending his e-mail to Schofield Barracks with terms of praise I would never have imagined reaping: “She's like no journalist you've ever seen,” he enthused. “She's a hawk!”

My point is this: I wound up briefing the Twenty-fifth by way of a coincidence. No concerted effort was being made to educate the army about the radically new duties that had been thrust upon it. With $178 billion in defense authorizations for 2004, almost nothing was earmarked for the acquisition of knowledge about the place where the troops would be investing the next year of their lives—about its languages, its history or culture, about what was currently at stake there. None of the GIs I talked to out at the base in Kandahar had received such training.

It is not that I, personally, knew so much. But, given the hybrid nature of the mission the army was now being asked to perform, the type of information and experience possessed by maybe a dozen people who had recently spent real time on the ground in Afghanistan had a new value. It seemed to me that such learning should be actively sought out, not just encountered by accident. It should be paid for, just as the latest in weapons technology is paid for. It seemed to me that as long as the Defense Department is conducting U.S. foreign policy, officers should be taught about the foreign land upon which their actions will have such a lasting impact.

Two months after the Twenty-fifth Infantry Division arrived in Kandahar, in the spring of 2004, I received an e-mail message from a highly competent female Civil Affairs sergeant named Heather. She had been tasked by high command to gather some material on local tribes and wondered if I could help. I had to laugh. I forwarded to her the crib sheet I had written up in Hawaii six months before. Heather sent it to Colonel Pedersen, verbatim. He commended her, giving no sign of ever having seen it before.

When I had my first long chat with him, I found that he had spent the two months since his arrival in Kandahar closeted almost exclusively with the new governor—not Shirzai by then, but Shirzai's close friend, the former minister of urban development, Yusuf Pashtun.

I suggested a few tribal elders whom Pedersen should really meet with for contrast. In the absence of Zabit Akrem and Ahmad Wali, who were both out of town, Akrem's elder, former crack anti-Soviet commander Mullah Naqib, was an obvious pick—Mullah Naqib, who had been a direct contact of the CIA during the anti-Soviet
Jihad;
Mullah Naqib, who had shot down three Soviet helicopters with U.S.-supplied Stinger missiles and who had actually returned the unused ones after the war was over; Mullah Naqib, who was appointed governor of Kandahar after the Taliban surrendered, but got shouldered out of the way; Mullah Naqib, the owner, for all intents and purposes, of Arghandab district, and the acknowledged leader of swathes of population all through the districts that counted militarily: Ma'rouf, Arghestan, Maywand.

Pedersen had never heard of him. There was no information on him available in any database. The U.S. Army, I discovered to my disbelief, had no institutional memory at all.

It has caused me to wonder ever since: how is it that an organization as rich in capacities and resources as the U.S. government can so neglect the fundamental task of learning?

Afghans don't believe in incompetence. When I would argue its preponderant weight in any given outcome, they always waved my words away, reaching instead for a theory, a tale of conspiracy or alliance, to explain U.S. actions. Akrem alone seemed intuitively to understand. I asked him one day how it had felt, back when the Taliban had finally fallen, to have to obey Mullah Naqib's command of nonviolence, to be forced to allow Gul Agha Shirzai to seize control of Kandahar.

Akrem surprised me: “We were overjoyed,” he answered. Then he explained. “We thought the Americans had a plan, that their support for Shirzai was part of a plan. We thought they were going to lay the foundations of a good government, a government that would be inclusive, acceptable to all the tribes.”

In the beginning, Akrem assured me, such a proactive form of nation building would have been easy for the Americans to pull off. “The people were so fearful. They were fearful of the Taliban, and they were just plain fearful because there was no courage left to them. Anything the Americans did would have been accepted.”

But slowly, said Akrem, the unruly Afghans roused themselves and began to examine the situation. “Gradually the people realized that there was nothing there. And they became rebellious. They realized the Americans had no plan at all—not for the government of Kandahar, not for Gul Agha Shirzai, not for anything. And they realized that President Karzai had no plan either, no
idea.”
Akrem used the English word to give the notion weight. “And now,” he concluded, “the government of Afghanistan is a government in name only.”

SPRING 2003

I
CONFESS
. I had a further reason for rushing to Kabul to meet Coalition commander Dan McNeill that April of 2003. I wasn't going merely to satisfy his curiosity and to expound my theories, yet again.

Two long months had passed since Qayum and I had written up that plan: How to Fire a Warlord in Eight Easy Steps. The real reason I went to Kabul was that I wanted to lay it on the general. I wanted to gauge his reaction. I wanted to see if he would in fact be willing to play the part we had assigned to him.

The plan provided for consultations between President Karzai and U.S. military officials. And it assumed that the U.S. military, so consulted, would help. I was pretty sure the United States would indeed provide such assistance to the president, if properly looped in. But I did not exactly
know
it. A one-on-one with General McNeill was my chance to find out.

For, nothing was advancing. American and Afghan officials were still locked in their spellbound waltz, dancing around each other.

Out of patience with the reticence in official quarters, I took it into my head to do the parties' turkey talking for them. I answered to nobody, so my actions could not really spark a diplomatic incident, or get me fired or anything.

“General,” I waded in, “a hypothetical. Let's say President Karzai wanted to dismiss one of these warlords—Governor Shirzai, just as an example. And let's say he approached you on it, asking for your help. Let's say he had some very specific tactical support he needed—not open-ended green-on-green kind of help, but some specifics. Park a couple of tanks by Razziq Shirzai's compound in the no-man's-land between Gate 1 and Gate 2 at KAF, for example. Or step up the patrols you already run along the border by Spin Boldak. What would you tell him? Could you do it?”

General McNeill did not say yes—exactly. His answer was more roundabout than that. I was putting him on the spot, and there was that note taker named Tim. What McNeill said, in substance, was that his mission was to pursue and catch members of the Al-Qaeda network and to create a safe and secure environment for rebuilding Afghanistan. And that—while he had to be careful not to attract too much attention—if he stayed below the radar operated by his superiors at Central Command, there was a lot he could manage to do within an imaginative interpretation of this mission.

It was all I needed. I
knew
the Americans would come through if asked the right way. I communicated as much to Karzai's chief of staff.

I was elated. I had closed the loop.

And then…I had to leave. It was almost physically painful. I was being ripped up by the roots just when everything was finally starting to happen. April Witt's article was still setting off time-release explosions like a fire in a munitions warehouse. I had McNeill's expression of concrete support. My Ghiljais had been received in Kabul and on the base in Kandahar. The base commander was alert and listening. And finally, a direct channel was opened up for Akrem. The pot was nearing the boil, and damned if I wasn't required, by previous engagement, to go back to the United States.

Anyway, I had hepatitis. In fact, I could not sit upright long enough to attend a children's workshop we were hosting at ACS. When I arrived at the airport in Dubai, I had been peeing yellow for two days. I looked in the stainless steel ladies' room mirror and was impressed with my tan. “Mom,” I said on the phone. I would never have called her from an airport; I must have been worried. “If you take vitamins, does your pee turn yellow?” I could hear my sister Eve's voice in the background. A pause. “You've got jaundice, dear,” my mother answered evenly. “Sounds like hepatitis.”

You're supposed to be laid up for weeks with hepatitis. I had to talk at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government three days after I made it to Boston. In a major concession, I spent two of those days in bed, before launching into the most suicidally frenetic U.S. visit I have ever survived.

At ACS-Boston we had hired a publicist. It was kind of second best to throwing ourselves into intensive fund-raising, which no one much enjoyed. Sue Dorfman was a short, tough, big-hearted broad who did her job well, meaning she booked me solid.

Harvard's Kennedy School kicked things off. It was their Forum series—heads of state had preceded me at that podium. It was just about in my front yard, thank goodness, so I was not too intimidated. I had to cling to the lectern to stay standing. I remember it as not one of my most stellar efforts, but it seemed to go down OK. I received a kind letter afterward from the Forum director.

Then it was editorial meetings with newspapers—the
Boston Globe,
the
Christian Science Monitor,
the
New York Times,
the
Washington Post—
contacts with such glittering potential partners as Physicians for Human Rights, radio interviews, naturally, and a few on TV, a visit with our beloved supporters in Lincoln and Concord, school trips to see kids who were interested in joining our sister-school program or who had already collected boxes of pencils and notebooks, meetings at the Pentagon and with congressmen…

And all of this for what? What was the objective? Consciousness-raising about Afghanistan? About Afghans for Civil Society? Grandstanding?

And I saw how this publicity stuff can take on a life of its own—how easy it is, even with good intentions, to get caught up in it. One becomes confused. Appointments are felt as obligations. A responsible girl does not miss them, and so she shows up—and performs. I remembered Bill Taylor telling me at the U.S. embassy in Kabul once, how impressed certain people were that I had chosen to drop a life at National Public Radio that offered a lot of public exposure, celebrity even, to work more discreetly and concretely behind the scenes. Well, what was Bill thinking now, I wondered. The loss of his respect was a painful price for admission to this circus. I tried to assuage my conscience with the thought that we were focusing some attention on the key issues in Afghanistan. We did get a few editorials into big newspapers.

One day, the road show was leaving for Washington. Eve had decided to stay behind. My support group consisted of our administrator, Ayse Yildiz, a funny and unflappable Turkish American artist who once death-lessly remarked: “Here we are, a bunch of kids from dysfunctional families, working at a dysfunctional organization, trying to fix a dysfunctional country”; and Amir Soltani, originally from Iran, penetratingly intelligent and as sensitive as fine crystal. Revolutions aside, Amir and I had discovered the first day we met that we had lived almost identical lives. He was irreplaceable solace and goad to thought during a tumultuous and soul-searing time.

We were late. We were running through the airport in Providence, Rhode Island. We weren't fast enough: we missed our cheap flight on Southwest by just over three minutes. We looked at each other, catching our breath. Amir and Ayse could take the next Southwest plane. I had to speak at the National Press Club Newsmakers series at two o'clock that afternoon. I would have to find another carrier. We bought a $400 United ticket to Reagan National. Next crisis: I had checked my damned bag. A first. And, another first, I had followed my mother's advice to wear something “comfortable” to travel in—read slovenly. I was going to have to buy some togs the second I hit the ground. There was a Banana Republic right around the corner from the National Press Club, praise the Lord. Never have I been so efficient. Light wool slacks, an appetizing brown herring-bone, a bit too flared at the bottom for my absolute taste, but hey. Thirty-five bucks. Shopping bag dangling from my elbow, I rode up in the elevator and, introductions barely complete, asked the Newsmakers moderator to show me the ladies' room. And I emerged, like Cinderella, presentable.

Despite the prestige that Sue Dorfman had drummed into my head, I knew this talk was not a really big deal. I used to be a journalist. No reporter with anything to do goes out to a lecture in the middle of the afternoon, and then writes about it. I was not the least surprised to see only about fifteen people sprinkled through the auditorium. And so I prepared to let loose. My Letter to Washington about the warlords and terrorism and the role of Pakistan was more than a month old. As is so often the case with epiphanies, everything in it seemed self-evident now. I was wound up like a toy mouse. And no one, I thought, was listening.

I put absolutely everything out there, my tirade only interrupted by Amir and Ayse, who came in halfway through, lugging our suitcases, trying to clamber discreetly into seats in the back. I was on about warlordism being the source of insecurity in Afghanistan, warlordism and terrorism linked hand in hand, Gul Agha Shirzai answering to both Pakistan and the United States, Pakistan's double game—the works. I got encouraging looks from a Voice of America delegation sitting in the front row, whose elderly team leader alternated between nodding in energetic agreement and falling asleep.

Later that evening I found out, ice water drenching my back, that VOA had made an eight-and-a-half-minute story out of my talk. I used to be a radio reporter, and I know: eight and a half minutes lasts approximately as long as the Jurassic Age. The thing was broadcast in Persian and Pashtu in, of course, Afghanistan. I called up VOA and asked nonchalantly what they had used. “Oh, the stuff about the Kandahar-to-Kabul highway,” they replied comfortingly. Right.

Someone told me during those frenetic days, on the phone from Kandahar, that Gul Agha Shirzai had actually gone to President Karzai to complain about me. I thought it was a joke.

Meanwhile, it did seem that at long last some of the warlord governors were on the verge of being fired. In telephone conversations, Qayum changed his focus away from Shirzai and toward the defense minister, a much bigger fish. When I asked why, Qayum told me Shirzai was a “done deal.” I got confirmation from my friend Roy Gutman, an illustrious former
Newsday
and
Newsweek
reporter with whom I had mightily enjoyed working in Bosnia and Serbia. Roy said that on a flight back from Kabul, he had talked to the U.S. special envoy, who had told him Shirzai's replacement was already chosen.

I learned that preparations were under way for a big governors' meeting in Kabul. They were being summoned, a round dozen of them. They were going to get the riot act, maybe several of them the ax. I started hopping up and down. There was no way I was going to miss this. I called in to President Karzai's chief of staff every day, ready to change my airplane ticket and race back for the show. It was happening. Everything was moving in the right direction.

Then, suddenly, on the phone one day, the chief of staff's tone of voice was not the same. “Uh, I don't know, Sarah,” he said. “I don't know if it's going to work. The Americans are backsliding.”

It was not possible. General McNeill had
promised
me. How could he be backsliding? But the chief of staff could not be cajoled out of his disappointment: it seemed that the U.S. invasion of Iraq a few months back was having an impact on people's enthusiasm. The Americans just did not want to take risks that might tie down troops in Afghanistan. Iraq was the main concern.

I needed a second opinion. I e-mailed General McNeill. I was trying to make travel plans, I told him. Were there any fireworks upcoming in Kabul that I might not want to miss?

The general wrote back: “Enjoy the spring flowers in Harvard Yard.”

That, to my dismay, sounded like a signal. “I copy,” I sent back. And I stayed in Boston.

Sure enough, the governors' meeting was a bust. Twelve notorious warlords gathered in Kabul, and President Karzai kept them there. I held my breath. Karzai made a thundering speech at the Supreme Court, threatening to resign, to bring down the government and call a new
Loya Jirga
, if they would not change their ways.

I knew the market value of this kind of threat, and I suspected the governors did too. On May 20, 2003, they signed a solemn oath to President Karzai. From now on, they vowed, they would send every bit of the money they were collecting in customs dues up to Kabul. They would obey Karzai's orders on the double, and they would refrain from pulling knives and guns on one another. Gul Agha Shirzai had been the first to leap to his feet and swear fealty. He boasted that he was making more than a million dollars a day in customs. From now on, all of it was Karzai's. Cross his heart.

Karzai's chief of staff tried to put a good a face on things: “They agreed to send every penny to Kabul,” he told April Witt for her story in the
Washington Post.
“When the president submitted the list of requirements, all of them said they would comply with no objections at all.”
¹

Well, of course they would
say
that, I thought. This is Afghanistan.

Many intelligent observers were impressed, however.
New York Times
correspondent Carlotta Gall described Karzai's “new firmness,”
²
and several foreign friends of mine in Kabul applauded. April was a bit more circumspect: “If honored,” she emphasized in her article, the pledge would bring many benefits. “But the agreement has no enforcement provision, and it remains to be seen whether it will have any effect on the warlords and provincial authorities throughout Afghanistan, who routinely act with independence and impunity.”
³